Biography
Shakir Ali was born on 6 March 6 1916, in Rampur, North India, into the well-known family of Indian nationalist Maulana Shaukat Ali (1873–1938) and Maulana Mohammad Ali (1879–1931). His father was an engineer, and his mother was a homemaker. Ali received his initial education from a private European tutor at home and his primary education at Jamia Milia Islamia. Ali studied at the prestigious Philanders Smith College in Nainital for his Senior Cambridge exam.
Ali started his artistic career at the Sarda Ukil Brothers Studio in Delhi, learning traditional Bengal School-style painting. In 1938, he enrolled in Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art Mumbai, where he received training in the European academic painting style and studied the aesthetics of Ajanta cave paintings.
In 1947, Ali went to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art for three years. His pursuit of art took him to the painter and educator Andre Lhote's (1885–1962) studio in Mirmande, South of France in 1949, where he worked for six months. The same year, Ali received a scholarship to study textile design at the University of Applied Arts in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czechia since 1992). The year in Prague cultivated his intellect as he discovered the writings of Julius Fučík (a Czech Communist journalist) and Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry, which profoundly affected his artistic practice. Ali returned to Pakistan in 1951 with his Czech wife and briefly taught at the Bai Virabaiji High School in Karachi. In 1952, He took up a teaching position at Mayo School of Industrial Arts Lahore (now The National College of Arts Lahore). Ali became the first principal of the Pakistani National College of Arts Lahore in 1962.
At the time of Ali's arrival in Lahore, senior pre-partition artists like Abdur Rehman Chughtai and Ustad Allah Bux held prominent positions in the art scene of Pakistan in their distinct painting styles. Chughtai promoted the Persian-Mughal painting style, forging a Muslim nationalist identity. Allah Bux continued his practice in European academic painting style, for which he was known as an ustad (master). Zubeida Agha was the only artist at that time in West Pakistan, experimenting with abstract art — an anomaly, to create her forte in Pakistani art. Zainul Abedin's minimalist modernist pen and ink drawings in East Pakistan (until 1971– now Bangladesh) were in demand.
In such an artistic milieu, Ali faced the challenge of making his place in the art scene of Pakistan. He immediately connected with the city's literary circles, including such famous writers as Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Intizar Hussain, Sibte Hasan, and Hasan Askari. Between Pak Tea House and Coffee House, the popular meeting venues for progressive writers and visual artists, Ali inspired his fellow intellectuals with his Western art knowledge and experience. With a strong background in traditional Indian painting and Western education, Ali engaged the young artists in debates on modern Western art practices. Ali's knowledge and discussion on art inspired a group of young artists, including Anwar Jalal Shemza, Ahmed Parvez, Ali Imam, Moyene Najmi, Sheikh Safdar, Mariam Habib, and Razia Ferroz to form an artist collective in 1952 called Lahore Art Circle (LAC).
Ali admired the crudeness of the Kangra style of Rajput painting and revered works of European master painters such as the Italian painter Tintoretto (1518–1594) and Spanish painter El Greco (1541–1614). Among his contemporaries, he appreciated the works of French painters Georges Braque (1882–1963) and Henri Matisse (1869 1954). Although oil paint became Ali's medium of choice, his use of bright colours and treatment of space resonates with Ajanta and Ellora cave paintings in India. In contrast, his application of paint and simplified forms allude to the currents of Western mainstream abstract art. In his earlier works entitled Still Life with Pineapple and Apple (1955) and Still Life with Scroll (1954), his focus was on thick black straight lines, arcs, and circles. This can be seen as his tribute to the Indian artist Jamini Roy (1887–1972) or Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso's (1881–1973) still lifes. Later, Ali's work evolved into soft, contoured, stylised, and simplified figurative paintings. They mainly comprised figures with long tapered legs, small heads, and feet but firmly grounded. He frequently used symbols of sun, moon, bird, cage, bull, and woman. His paintings were sometimes titled based on Western myths like Leda and the Swan or Europa and the Bull.
In one of his 1964 radio interviews with Syed Mehboob Ali and Khatar Ghaznavi, Ali talked about his favorite genre of painting being abstract art. He stated, "Although I have learned from different teachers, different kinds of art, I find myself attached to abstract art. It allows one to express a mood which can be about the social condition or atmosphere, rather than narrating a story".
In the 1960s, Ali returned to his earlier training in mural painting with a modernist approach to abstract art, exploring the Arabic calligraphy of the Quran with a painterly expression — a popular trend in Middle East North Africa. He completed at least four commissioned murals in Pakistan, including one at the Punjab Public Library and another at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, Islamabad. At this time, Ali was very interested in the form of Arabic letters. Later, he also used the Urdu poetry of Ghalib to continue his newly found convention.
Ali's hybridisation of an Indic tradition of bright, flat colors, black outlines, and respect for two-dimensional space with the Western sensibility of abstraction of shapes, planes, and forms fostered a new wave of modern art practices in Pakistan. His catalyst role in founding the LAC shaped the progressive trends among the emerging artists of Pakistan. Among his many students, one of the most outstanding and prolific is Pakistani contemporary artist Zahoor ul Akhlaq, one of Pakistan's foremost contemporary artists. Ali retired from the National College of Arts Lahore in 1973 and passed away after a short illness on 27 January 1975.
Ali's work is in the collections of Lidice Gallery, Czechia, Qatar Foundation, Doha; Lahore Museum; Alhamra Arts Council, Lahore; Pakistan National Arts Council; Pakistan National Gallery; Punjab Library; Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, Islamabad; and numerous private collections. In 1967, he was awarded President's Pride of Performance (one of the highest awards conferred by the Government of Pakistan on Pakistani civilians in recognition of distinguished, meritorious work in the fields of art, literature, sports, medicine, and science) and Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1971 (highest Civil Award conferred by the Government of Pakistan in recognition of outstanding contributions to the history of Pakistan).
